Berkley's Amici's Restaurant to be featured on Cooking Channel's 'Pizza Cuz' show June 3

(left) Jennifer Stark and Maureen McNamara, owners of Amici's Pizza & Living Room in Berkley, with their portabella mushroom pizza that will be featured on the "Girl Power" show on the Cooking Channel June 3rd (Oakland Press Photo:Vaughn Gurganian)

When they were teens, Jen Stark and Maureen McNamara played clarinet together in the Royal Oak Dondero High School Marching Band.

Now, all grown up and back together again after varied careers, the two women are marching to the tune of a different drummer.

They are running Amici's Restaurant at 3249 W. Twelve Mile, between Coolidge and Greenfield in Berkley, that is so popular the women and a couple of their crowd-pleasing pizzas will be featured on the Cooking Channel's "Pizza Cuz" show at 9 p.m. Monday, June 3 as one of the nation's top three pizzerias owned by women.

The making of their Caribbean spicy jerk chicken pizza with peanut ginger sauce; and their portabella mushroom pizza, which the women say is the "gateway from pepperoni pizza to authentic Italian pizza," was filmed for the show.

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A crew of about 10 people visited Amici's in February and filmed and interviewed the women and their customers from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.

"We were honored," to be selected to feature on the show, said McNamara.

Stark said: "There are thousands of pizza places in this county. It was a shock and we were really surprised and honored," to be selected.

A preview of Monday night's show on the Cooking Channel's website indicates Fran and Sal, the cousins who are hosts of Pizza Cuz, will visit some of the most successful women in pizza.

In Berkley, on warm balmy evenings, it is not only the aroma of pizza baking in the ovens drifting out to the streets that lure customers to Amici's. It is also the landscaped garden patio behind the restaurant tended by master gardener McNamara, as well as the opportunity to try one of the more than 60 kinds of martinis invented behind the bar.

Before the women met up again, Stark had been a talent scout in the music industry in New York and McNamara had been in advertising, a massage therapist and lived in Italy for three years.

"I ate a lot of pizza in Italy," said McNamara, who joked that she now uses her masseuse skills to knead pizza dough.

The two women met up again eight years ago when Stark's brother George was selling his pizza business.

"We were both in a point in our life that we were ready to make a career change and this presented itself and here we are," Stark said.

"I was a customer and I knew what a gem it was. It was exactly as it is now; Maureen and I took what he created and sort of shined it up a little bit," Stark said.

The shining up included adding two different kids of pizza, whole wheat crust and gluten-free crust; and improvements to the back patio that include electricity and McNamara's landscaping, which Stark said draws people to see it.

The women took on the same martini bar menu Stark's brother had, but expanded it.

"We are always looking for new creations. We have 64 types of martinis," Stark said, including flavors like salted caramel pretzel and elder flower.

McNamara's two children, 18 and 20, and Stark's niece, a college student, are working in the restaurant.

During cooler weather, Amici's seats 70 and in warm weather, when the front and back patios are open, about 110.

The two also have a carry-out location at 1160 Grant Street in Birmingham off Lincoln.